A
scholarly practitioner is described as “someone who mediates between her
professional practice and the universe of scholarly, scientific, and academic
knowledge and discourse . . . that is,
someone who is continually integrating professional practice and research”
(Bentz & Shapiro, 1998, p. 66). Bentz and Shapiro (1998) indicate that the
first step to becoming a scholarly practitioner is to get involved with research—asking
questions, reading current and classic research, and articulating your
interests in research. In recent years, blogging has become a rich resource for
topics and discussion around research. I have been pleasantly surprised at the
ease of reading research blogs in that the tone tends to be more casual and
conversation-like.
Blogging
allows academics and researchers a public or private platform to accomplish a
variety of things. Terese Bird encourages researchers to jump in and get
started with blogging and experience the possibilities such as: motivation and
progress tracking; research diary; publicity; practice for career; academic
networking; social networking; discussion; and digital profile/CV building.
Heide
Estes uses her blog as a way to work through issues that arise from her
academic work and also how she perceives a non-visible chronic illness impacts
her academic identity. I couldn’t find a clear definition of academic identity (on her blog or
elsewhere) but I believe it is an individual’s view of themselves as an
academic and how they want to be perceived by others (students, colleagues,
superiors, etc.). I felt it was an
appropriate way for her to bring attention to this issue of hidden disability
for herself and for the population as a whole.
Resources:
Bentz, V. M. & Shaprio,
J. J. (1998). Mindful inquiry in social
research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Bird, T. (2011).
Blogging for researchers [Slide share]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/tbirdcymru/blogging-for-researchers
Estes, H. (2012).
Blogging and academic identity. Literature
Compass, 9(12), 974-982. DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12017
Yvonne - I just wrote a post about the essence of academic blogging as well. If I am going to try to blog in an academic style, probably a good idea to understand what that means.
ReplyDeleteI liked Estes article about how you can have different reasons for blogging and each perspective you take on denotes a different way of blogging - one's voice and style changes depending on the purpose.
I also liked what Goodacre had to say in his own personal academic blog - that academic blogging allows for an immediacy of support and feedback that wasn't there before - used to have to wait for a long peer review process. This not only helps researchers during by giving them more feedback, but there is also an increase in the diversity of their audience.
I am enjoying this academic style of blog - seems like you are as well :)
Yes, I agree. I think the immediacy is a huge attraction to the blogging concept for academics.
ReplyDelete